This brings us to the bane of drug discovery: absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME). This is something that industry does very well.
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ADME in academia, well, let’s just say, not so much. The reasons for this are likely pretty simple: its an important area of drug development but not the most exciting, by any stretch of the imagination (sorry you ADME specialists), and it often requires all sorts of rather expensive testing in model organisms that aren’t used often in academic labs. Its also highly compound-specific and this makes grant writing very hard (or so I hear).

JuniorProf then goes on to make an argument for why drug development should be done in academia and how that might work best. He then describes a recent NIH initiative that is trying to support some academic drug development effort.Go read. Follow @juniorprofblog on Twitter or perhaps just the #painresearchmatters hashtag.